News Archive

Today, protests are underway in cities across the world. For background on why we're occupying to Shut Down The Corporations and the American Legislative Exchange Council, see here. Follow @F29PDX, @OccupyWallSt, @OWSTactical, #F29 (#29F for European actions), and #ALEC on Twitter. Because there are large numbers of decentralized actions today, we will do our best to make updates and include links to individual livestreams below.

As an overview, the actions today varied from sit-ins and pickets to street theater and banner drops. There were many creative actions including a foreclosure on Citibank, a “Corporate Debutant Ball” in Salt Lake City, teach-ins in Norman, OK and Naples, FL, actions targeting Pfizer, the Koch Brothers and Bank of America in New York, and a delicious Ice Cream Bloc in Oakland. Three distribution centers of Wal-Mart were shut down in a coordinated southern California action, as well as the World Corporate Headquarters of Pfizer in Connecticut. Further ALEC corporations targeted included Monsanto in Washington D.C., AT&T in Kansas City, MO and Atlanta, an action at the BP trial in New Orleans, Bank of America in Charlotte, PNM in Alburqurque, Altria in Richmond, and Peabody Coal in St. Louis. Dozens of other cities took action as part of F29 including Denver, Minneapolis, Louisville, Winston-Salem, and many others. We are proud to say the tone of the actions today remained jubilant and focused even in the face of police repression.

We’d heard that corporations in the vicinity of Bryant Park—where tomorrow’s Shut Down the Corporations demonstration will commence at 9:00 a.m.—were warning their employees not to engage protesters in the area. But we are pleasantly surprised to learn that the New York Police Department is expecting us: as evidenced by the department-wide memo they’ve issued (see below), the NYPD’s Counterterrorism Bureau Terrorism Threat Analysis Group (glad to know they’re on top of the important stuff) knows where/when the day’s activities will start, how/when the call went out, why we’re marching and who we’re targeting (B of A, Pfizer and Koch Industries). So that’s where all of our page views are coming from! They even pasted our #F29 poster into the document! Read More...

The last thing to go were the kitchen shelves. Around a dozen occupiers peacefully resisted to the last; a short distance away a vigil continued on the Cathedral steps as others observed, supported, prayed and remembered. The police cordons made the groups seem further apart than they actually were.

On the steps, a mini GA discussed events as they were happening around it – and in particular the collusion of Saint Paul’s Cathedral in the eviction they had previously said that they did not want to see. At around 2am in the morning, the floodlights which illuminate the neoclassical edifice of that great building were turned off. When the lights returned, four policemen could be clearly seen on the balcony, in silhouette.

Not long afterwards, police were given leave to clear the steps themselves, the site of former Canon Chancellor Giles Fraser’s famous intervention of 16 October, when he asked the police to leave and recognised our right to assemble. Giles Fraser, who is so much a part of this story, was prevented from crossing the police lines to reach the Occupy London Stock Exchange site tonight. We would have liked to see him there.

This morning, the City of London Corporation and St Paul’s Cathedral have dismantled a camp and displaced a small community, but they will not derail a movement. Read More...

This Wednesday, Occupiers in New York, Oakland, Mexico City, and over 80 other cities will take part in a coordinated National Day of Action to Shut Down the Corporations. Occupations have been preparing a variety of decentralized actions in response to Occupy Portland's call to target the American Legislative Exchange Council:

We specifically call on people to target corporations that are members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The biggest corporations in America, like ExxonMobil, Bank of America, BP, Monsanto, Pfizer, and Wal-Mart use ALEC to buy off legislators and craft legislation that serves only the interests of corporations and not people. They then duplicate and spread this corporate legislation in Washington, D.C. and in state legislatures across the country. The anti-labor legislation in Wisconsin and the racist bill SB 1070 in Arizona are two recent and destructive examples of what corporations use ALEC to do.

See here for more about why we protest corporate power and how ALEC seeks to erode our democracy, undermine workers rights and attack unions, destroy our environment, obstruct efforts to address climate change, undermine public education, pursue destructive agricultural practices and fuel the prison industrial complex. You can also RSVP for the Occupy Wall St/NYC Facebook event. For national coverage, follow @F29PDX on Twitter.

Simultaneously, European trade unions have declared Feb. 29th a European Day of Action against austerity, following massive demonstrations against budget cuts in Greece, Spain, Belgium, and elsewhere. Decentralized actions in all 27 European Union nations and beyond will be "sending a clear message to the EU leaders: this imposed austerity is going to plunge Europe into a recession!"

The effects of the financial, economic and social crisis have reached unbearable levels in several countries. Faced with the extreme seriousness of the situation, European leaders are making the race for austerity their priority response. The crisis serves as a ready-made pretext to attack the European social model, justify cuts in wages and public services, weaken social protection, make the labour market hyperflexible, and attack trade union rights.

Thus, at a time when the European summit has to adopt a treaty plunging Europe into recession and job insecurity for the long haul, the European trade unions are saying “enough is enough” and putting employment, recovery, social justice and solidarity at the forefront of the discussions.